


Want My Name On the Marquee

by nightlibrary



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:15:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightlibrary/pseuds/nightlibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn hasn't really been the same since Liam, but he's good at keeping that to himself, and it's not really Harry's fault if her teasing has him thinking about more than what it'd be like if he gave in--or that she and Louis have something Zayn can't help but want for himself. Basically, Zayn wants sex with Harry to be casual, and Harry just wants Zayn to feel good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Want My Name On the Marquee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cmdf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmdf/gifts).



> I hope it helps you in your time of drought, my darling muse xx

“Hey.”

It’s Harry’s voice in his ear, and Zayn immediately brings a hand to his hair, scratching at the side of his head and then cursing himself for reacting. It’s so easy, normally, to sit still. Like nothing’s happening.

But God, he caught Harry getting dressed earlier--the long line of her legs, slim hips and narrower waist and wide shoulders, bare back and sheer black lace underwear. He’d slipped away as quickly as he could. Didn’t want Harry to see him looking; didn’t know what he’d say, or what she’d say in return. Something in him now knows, though: He hadn’t moved quickly enough.

“I saw you, earlier,” Harry murmurs, and damn him for letting a shudder run down his spine. He forces his hands to a hopefully natural-seeming stillness and stares out across the stage, trying to focus on Liam and Louis and Niall answering Twitter questions and definitely not on Harry’s hand at the small of his back.

“Where?” Zayn replies, vague, like he’s not sure at all what Harry’s talking about. She huffs a laugh that billows beneath his shirt collar. He curses himself for not wearing the tank top and jacket; so much less room for error.

With error of course being Harry fucking Styles’ fingers slipping beneath the hem of his shirt while her hot breath slips over his collarbones and down his chest.

“Harry, Jesus,” he hisses, but he can’t jump without being obvious; _Jesus_ , there are going to be videos everywhere of this as it is, photos of him and Harry huddled together with paragraph-long captions about their intimacy and how the shadows of their eyelashes are communicating secret messages same as sundials tell time. He feels another shudder roll through him as Harry’s fingers climb to the next knob of his spine.

“In the doorway. I saw you in the mirror.” Her hand slips even higher and Zayn’s fingers itch with the need to grab her wrist, stop her moving; his shirt will start to rise and someone’s bound to see and make a remark, as it’s too slow a movement to be anything but deliberate. Goddamn Harry.

“Harry, please, someone’s gonna--,”

“Did you like it? ‘Cause,” and she pauses to dig her fingernails into his skin, just a bit, and Zayn feels his mouth open against his will, air gusting out softly, “I think you did.”

“Louis’ gonna be pissed, he sees you like this,” Zayn whispers fiercely, and Harry giggles into his ear but pulls back. She slides over to stand just beside him and tosses him a smile.

“Lou’ll be fine. He knows he’s my favorite,” she says. It’s dismissive. Zayn bites his lower lip. It’s true, of course; no matter how much Harry tugs at Zayn’s belt loops or bites his earlobes, no matter how many times she moans a little when he pinches her, just to fuck him up: He knows it’s Louis, every time. Just this morning he watched him wave a hand absently without even turning from his laptop and cereal bowl.

“Harry,” he’d said, slow and distracted, “Harry, c’mere.”

And Harry’d been sitting in Zayn’s lap--not nearly, not almost; she’d climbed directly into his lap after he’d refused to pass the honey and she had her legs hooked around the back of his chair, hips right against his--but she’d gotten up immediately, abandoned even the pretense of teasing Zayn to give her attention to whatever ridiculous thing Louis had found for him and Harry to share. Another thing to keep between the two of them. Another secret, like who tops when they fuck (Liam won’t stop asking, which Niall thinks is hilarious and Zayn thinks is irritating) or whose stupid idea it was for them to get matching tattoos. As if not enough attention is paid to the fact that they are attached at the hip. Honestly.

Zayn still doesn’t know what it was they were laughing about, but he does know that Harry had bent double to get her head on Louis’ shoulder and it made her legs look terribly good in her skirt and he’d had to tear his face away and get up from the table, toast in one hand and mug in the other. He’d hovered in the hall, unsure as to whether he ought to find Niall or Liam. Liam makes him talk. Niall lets him stew.

He’d gone to find Niall. They’d played FIFA and he’d kicked Niall’s ass for three rounds, then ordered them in sandwiches. Niall ate his and dragged Zayn up the bed to take a nap. Zayn left his half finished and rested his chin on the top of Niall’s soft head, sighing until his eyelids slipped shut and stayed that way.

It was soothing, casual, sufficiently distracting. But now Liam’s throwing frowns at him across the stage and Zayn can feel a tension building in his shoulders and if Harry would just stop touching him, God. It’d be fine. He’d be fine. He gives Liam a small nod and starts walking over just as Louis says his name. _Perfect timing_ , he thinks grimly, and tries not to watch as Harry skips over and twirls her way around Louis. He aims a swat at her ass and Harry dodges him, grinning like a madwoman. Zayn refuses to note the way it makes her eyes glow like green glass bottles turned candleholders. Refuses to look at her. He looks to Niall instead.

He turns the answer to Louis’ question into a joke, and Liam is the first to laugh, despite the way he nudges Zayn’s hip as if to say, _Don’t think you’re not talking later_. Zayn keeps his sigh to himself. For now, he has to keep smiling at the crowd.

He feels Harry’s fingers brush the seat of his jeans as she passes behind him, moving incessantly around the stage.

 _Smile_ , he thinks to himself. _Just for now_.

 

\--  


****

He’s not smiling several hours later, sprawled out across Liam’s hotel room floor in his underwear. Liam won the lottery this round and he’s got a room all to himself; Louis is sharing with Niall and somehow, Zayn’s sharing with Harry. He hasn’t been into their room since the end of the show; a shame, since he accidentally left his phone on the nightstand. His clothes are sitting in a pile next to Liam’s bed and he’s been waiting for Liam to finish showering so they can swap places, but now that Liam’s come back through the bathroom door and is dragging a hand through his wet hair, towel around his waist, Zayn can’t seem to bring himself to his feet.

Instead, he throws an arm over his eyes and says, “She’s driving me insane.”

“Because you let her,” Liam replies, but it’s sympathetic rather than flat. Zayn can hear him digging through his suitcase for a pair of clean underwear. It takes him seconds; Zayn smiles. It takes Harry ages to find anything she wants in her suitcase. Normally Louis or Zayn or Liam--whichever she’s rooming with--has to help her.

Liam continues, “Look. It’s not like I don’t know Harry’s a tease; I’d say she wrote the book if it weren’t for Louis. But honestly, Zayn, it’s like--you just--,”

Zayn pulls his arm from his face to squint up at Liam, whose face is momentarily obscured as he scrubs his bath towel over his head. When he pulls it away the longer bits of hair are stuck to his forehead and Zayn wants to smile, but it feels wrong with Liam’s expression so serious. And really, he feels so tired.

“Just what?” he prompts, and Liam heaves a sigh before sitting down beside Zayn, towel in his lap.

“You like it,” he finishes, and Zayn watches him wince, like he knows exactly how much Zayn hates to hear it, knows exactly how it sounds. “She messes with you and she lies when we ask her about her and Lou, and you pretend to believe her, even though you don’t.”

“We haven’t got any proof--,” Zayn starts, but it’s weak to his own ears, and Liam levels him with a look.

“You don’t believe her, because you know. We all know, Zayn, jeeze; you don’t just look at someone like that. And I don’t care--I--,”

Zayn waits, because it’s like this with Liam. Long frustrated pauses and frowns and hunts for good phrasing. Zayn’s got the patience for it, and it pays out; Louis’ better with advice, gentle when you need it, but this? Louis’d laugh, endlessly.

Or, well. Maybe not. It’s Harry, after all.

“I don’t care,” Liam says, finding his thread, “what they say, what they have. I--I trust them, Zayn, we all do, to know what they’re doing, but. It’s not like that, not for you. It never has been. You get jealous,” he finishes, voice tapering into softness. They stare at eachother for a beat.

“Yeah,” Zayn says, quiet. “I do.”

Liam swallows hard. Zayn keeps staring him down, unsympathetic. It’s unkind, but he can’t help it tonight; there’s a bitterness behind his teeth and it’s not Liam’s fault, but Liam’s here to take it if Harry won’t. If Zayn won’t give it to her. _Goddamn it_.

“You and I,” Liam says, very softly, “we were different. We bounced back, yeah? You and Harry--you’re not gonna bounce back from that. And you can’t have them both; you don’t even want them both. It’d drive you crazy.”

Zayn sits up. He searches Liam’s face. “What’d you eat today? Jeeze, Li, coming over all sage on me.”

It works; Liam smiles.

“Shut up,” he says, voice fond as the shove he gives to Zayn’s shoulder. His eyes are still serious. “You can’t have her, Zayn. She--I love Harry, we all love her, but she’s her own, yeah? No one can have her.”

“Except Louis,” Zayn says, and it’s only half bitter. Louis and Harry--you can’t hate them, the way they are, gorgeous and brilliant and electric. There’s a magic there big enough to be the eighth wonder of the world, or something massive like that: It’s the kind of love you look at and think, _There’s a poem about this, somewhere_. It’s how they know, all of them, that when Liam asks about sex it’s not a joke, and it’s not crude, either. It’s a curiosity like a hunger--almost a desperation.

You look at them, at Harry and Louis, and you need to know everything, because it’s the answer to a question you can feel in the pickup of your pulse when a girl walks into a room and has the right curve to her cheek or shine to her hair or just the right trill to her laugh, or when a boy pulls on the hem of his shirt and you catch just the barest glimpse of a tattoo you might like enough to need to understand. It’s the answer to the question of fate, of forever, of _maybe this time_. You look at them and you look at their hands, the red strings tattooed around their smallest fingers, and you feel the tug, feel the thing that pulls you forward, like a dull ache in your chest.

“Zayn,” Liam says, still gentle, and Zayn blinks at him before shaking his head free of his thoughts.

“Hm?”

“You should shower.”

Right.

Zayn climbs to his feet. He doesn’t bother to wait to strip off his underwear; the shorts pool at his ankles and he kicks them until they’re beside the rest of his clothes. He stands there for a second, scrubbing at his sweaty hair and trying to think of something, anything to say that sounds better than, “I still feel like I want her.”

But that’s what comes out, anyway.

Liam stares up at him from his seat on the floor. If there’s anyone entirely unperturbed by a naked Zayn, it’s Liam. Actually, it’s almost nice. With Liam beneath him, hair down and damp, here in Liam’s hotel room, Zayn feels a bit like a ghost of himself. Like at any moment the ache in his chest will feel soothed by Liam’s hands on his ankles and Liam’s mouth on his calf. He remembers Liam’s mouth, still, like an echo. It’s strange, but it’s good. It’s good, not wondering if Liam feels the same comfort in seeing Zayn naked as Zayn feels in being bare before him. He knows he does. It’s there in his face, every time. Like evidence: _Once, you felt you had it right_.

Nothing about Harry feels right.

“People aren’t things, Zayn, or places. And Harry, like--,” Liam struggles, rubbing at one temple with the flat of a palm, “You can’t even box her into what she isn’t. She’s just. Look.” He finally sounds frustrated, though it doesn’t seem to be directed at Zayn, and Zayn feels a fondness swelling in him as he watches his best friend dig for words to give him. “Louis and Harry, they have what they have, and they’re young, they’re doing whatever. Harry’s free to do what she wants, and maybe what she wants to do is fool around with you. God knows I understand it,” he says, and his smile as he does is closer to a grimace but still so earnest, “wanting you. You’re so different from Lou, yeah? Harry, she likes interesting things she can take apart. She loves Lou because he’s...,”

Liam takes a long breath, eyes dropping to Zayn’s knees, like he’s trying to focus on something distant. Zayn waits for him. The air conditioning is starting to feel cooler; he shivers a little.

“Louis is a Rubix cube,” Liam says, finally. “Harry can play all she wants, but the puzzle’s not gonna break apart, yeah? It’ll look different, maybe, but it can be changed and it’s always going to be a challenge. She’s never going to break it or--or mess it up.”

He lifts his eyes to Zayn’s again, and Zayn’s breath almost catches at the softness there.

“You’re a picture puzzle, yeah? One with pieces. And she’s gonna undo you and she’s gonna leave you there, she doesn’t know better, and she’s gonna lose one of the corner pieces under the couch and it’s gonna take you ages to figure out where it went, and it’ll be all dusty and--,”

“Liam,” Zayn says. That’s all. Liam cuts off and sits there, eyes almost watering.

“It’s not a good metaphor,” he says, and his voice is a little rougher, “but just--don’t, okay? Don’t lose the corner piece.”

He’s right, it’s not a good metaphor. But Zayn leans down and kisses his forehead anyway.

“I won’t.”

Liam smiles at him. Zayn walks into the bathroom, shuts the door, and turns on the shower. He waits for the water to run hot, and the whole time he’s standing under the spray, he thinks of fate, and puzzles, and everything that comes together and falls apart.

 _I didn’t lie to Liam_. _I didn’t lie_.

He rests his forehead against the shower wall and tries to force himself to believe it.

 

\--

 

After his shower, he heads back to his own hotel room, dressed entirely in Liam’s clothes. Sweatpants, t-shirt, no underwear. It’s not a usual for him; he knows Harry does it, rather more often than anyone might expect, but he feels strange in only one layer of cloth. He just didn’t want to snag a pair of Liam’s underwear.

“I owe you one already,” he said, and Liam smiled and agreed.

He knocks twice and waits. He’s about to fish his keycard out of his jeans when Harry answers.

“Hi,” she says, and it’s not as bright as usual. More like a spotlight through smoke than a patch of sunlight. Zayn slips past her to his bed.

“Hi,” he returns, just as soon as he’s crouched at his suitcase and dumping his clothes beside it, finding his cellphone not on the nightstand like he’d thought but somehow mysteriously on the floor beside it. He wonders if he knocked it off in his sleep; maybe? Missed trying to turn off his alarm, most likely. He picks it up and sets it on the stand with his keycard just beneath it, then stands up.

There’s a pair of arms waiting for him. They snake around his waist and Zayn squeezes his eyes shut.

“You alright?” Harry murmurs, low in his ear. Zayn knows she’s trying to be comforting. It’s in his head, this idea that she’s trying to ruin him, right here, when there’s concern in her voice and his muscles ache like he’s run a marathon but he’s still trying to lift something heavier than himself.

“Yeah,” he murmurs back. “M’fine.”

Harry’s arms disappear and are replaced by her hands, tugging, trying to turn Zayn around. He moves like he can’t help himself. _He can_. _He knows better_. His eyes are still shut.

“Zayn, look at me.”

He opens his eyes, and Harry’s right there, God. Her face is inches from his and she’s staring right into his eyes.

She reaches a finger up, runs it over his bottom lip. He shivers--that he can’t help, the way his skin feels like a lake’s surface, cold and shuddering and just waiting for an impact. Waiting for Harry to dive in, shatter the illusion of calm, break up the pretty picture on the surface-- _God_ , he can’t stop thinking in metaphors, can’t stop spiraling into thoughts of scenery. This girl’s making him crazy.

“I think,” she says, and her voice is low and serious, but there’s something like mischief in her eyes. “You need a little shake up, hm?”

He just keeps staring. There’s something bigger there, in her face, and Zayn thinks Harry always looks a bit mischievous--something she picked up from Louis, probably--but not always like this, like maybe she’s worried and confused and needs to do something about it. About him.

She tilts forward and he doesn’t stop her, doesn’t freeze up at the way she giggles and breathes out over his mouth: “I think I owe you.”

He doesn’t do anything at all. He stands there staring and feeling like he’s on the edge of something, like every cliche ever written about a decision, and he can feel time stretching like a rubber band and can’t seem to think of a course of action, can’t think of anything between the stretch and the snap back, his resolve crumbling under the force of it. A rush of thoughts hits him at once: The way he’s making it up anyway, the way this moment feels, the way he’s already talked to Liam and he knows exactly what not to do here, and the way he knows he’s going to do it anyway. He’s going to do it anyway, because he’s never met a puzzle he could resist putting together and he doesn’t care that every thought he’s had since Harry first bit his neck with more intent than teasing has been some runaway diary entry from his fifteen-year old self. And no, he doesn’t care that there isn’t a picture on the stupid box of their imaginary relationship, that he and Harry aren’t anything built to last.

 _Fuck_ , he has to stop thinking. Harry’s his friend. Harry is his _friend_ ; it’s not her fault, the way he can’t stop looking for something else, the way he feels so jealous when Louis does nothing but shoot her a thumbs up and she bursts out laughing like it means more, means a hundred things. It isn’t even her--it’s just--she’s beautiful, she’s white hot and shimmering like tarmac in the summer wherever he turns his head and if there’s a lesson he hasn’t learned, it’s that not every beautiful thing should be touched.

He doesn’t do anything at all.

“Zayn,” Harry whispers. It’s a question and a goading and a comfort. Zayn’s mouth parts as if to taste it.

And then he moves.

He surges forward so quickly that Harry yelps in surprise, then gasps as he lifts her up, hands under her thighs and one slipping higher, up beneath the leg of her shorts and he groans when he feels lace, remembering. _Sometimes, Harry doesn’t wear underwear_. The thought comes back to him and he wants to kiss it for not being true now.

Harry tips herself back onto Zayn’s bed, still in his arms. Her head and shoulders hit the comforter and she arches her back, hips grinding up into his.

“Fuck,” Zayn hisses, “Harry--,”

“Zayn, if you don’t get down here right now, you can curse at me for the rest of your life, but I won’t--,”

He doesn’t wait to find out what she won’t. He releases his grip and she pushes herself back and up, climbs onto her knees and pulls off her shirt. He just watches her, the smooth splay of her skin and the tiny freckles hiding in plain sight, single and small and dark in the white of her. He wants to taste all of them, see if they’re different from the rest of her. Doesn’t think about how Louis probably knows; doesn’t look at her and see anyone else. He just breathes out.

“Like seeing me like this, don’t you?”

He nods, and Harry grins at him. It’s filthy and delighted all at once.

“Come here,” she says, and Zayn climbs onto the bed so he’s mirroring her, on his knees and looking down into her face. She takes hold of his hips and slips her thumbs beneath the waistband of Liam’s sweatpants.

“Why,” she says, pressing up into him, chest to chest, her mouth at his ear, “are you wearing Liam’s clothes?”

It’s nothing but a curious question. Zayn’s reminded again: This is casual for her, this is friends being stupid, this is her trying to make him wind down and feel good. They’re like this, the lot of them; affectionate and inappropriate and handsy, mouths on cheeks and ears and necks. Zayn’s been complaining about sex, been watching Harry parade around being cheeky and foolish and teasing for weeks; she’s playing a game, just another game with him, same as chess or gin or Ring of Fire when they all feel up to it. He sucks in a breath.

“Was in his room, wanted a shower, didn’t want to come back to get clothes.” He makes it sound as ordinary as possible. He wants this to be ordinary. _It isn’t her fault_.

She hums softly, fingers slipping up under his shirt and not stopping, nails on his ribs. He lets out a little huff and feels her smile against his cheek.

“You sure you’re alright?” she whispers, and Zayn could cry from the sudden gentleness of her. It’s too much for his head, the way Harry slips back and forth, one second single-minded and desirous and silly and the next warm and friendly and just checking in. And she’s always checking in. Harry worries about him, about his moods, and before she started making him feverish she was his rock. She still is.

He kisses her rather than answering. She hums again into his mouth, appreciative. Her fingernails dig in a little harder.

“Know you like that,” she murmurs, and Zayn lets her slip his shirt over his head. She backs up to look at him once she’s tossed it aside and half-smiles at him.

“Liam loves you, y’know? We all do.”

Zayn needs her to stop talking. If he’s not going to make Harry a part of whatever it is--his desperate agenda to find something sustaining, some kind of anchor--then he needs her to be what she is on stage or at breakfast or on ordinary afternoons where one second Zayn is laughing at Niall’s joke and the next second he’s got his armrest in a death grip as she blows cool air onto the back of his neck. He needs her to be chasing a high and nothing more.

“C’mere,” he says, and grabs her hips, slides back and around so he’s higher up the bed and she’s just in front of him, pliant and willing. He pushes her back and she kicks her feet out to either side of his hips, setting with her feet flat and her knees bent, caging him in.

“Whatcha gonna do?” she says, grinning and waggling her eyebrows like an absolute idiot and still looking ridiculously sexy, arms throw up above her head and long enough to reach the baseboard. Zayn digs his fingers into her hips and she cants them up, teasing.

He leans forward then, slipping his thumbs beneath the edge of her underwear and smiling to himself when he feels he thighs go a little tenser, knows her toes are curling into the bedspread in anticipation. He presses a kiss beside her bellybutton and she shivers a little. She’s still wearing her grin.

He slides back and slips lower, mouth between his thumbs and then lower, going slowly, knowing how she loves it, being kept waiting. He’s never--God, he’s never done this, never fucked Harry, but it’s there in her face, always. This whole month, three weeks, however long she’s been teasing him--it’s been there, in the little flares of want when he pinches her or pushes her aside a little, always gentle but promising roughness. He can’t help thinking it’s probably gorgeous with her and Louis--with the way Louis loves a tease, loves messing with anyone and most especially with anyone who’ll beg for more. _That’s Harry_ , he thinks. A girl who begs. He shudders.

“C’mon, c’mon,” she mutters, and he nearly rolls his eyes--an unconscious gesture and a comfort, because if he’s capable of exasperation it means he’s relaxing, losing himself in this. He presses an open-mouthed kiss over her underwear and Harry lets out a pleased little huff.

 _Fuck_.

He licks flat over the lace, liking the roughness on his tongue, wanting to drag this moment out. Remembering her standing oblivious in the golden glow of her dressing room lights. God, it’s filthy of him, but he loves the strange innocence of Harry, the way no matter how sexy she is she still seems new, fresh in a way that feels different from the so-often jaded girls that he meets in clubs. It’s depressing, almost. They know they’re sexy and experienced and they know that to so much of the world that makes them whores, and they harden themselves to it. It makes them bitter. Zayn hates it; would give them all more comfort if he could. Because there’s a beauty in feeling free to be sexy and experienced. One that Harry has here, in this odd bubble of fame. Charming Harry Styles with her rock ‘n’ roll voice and endless legs and cherubic smile is allowed to be exactly as sexy as she wants.

And she is. Under him, bucking up just slightly. “C’mon, Zayn,” she whispers.

“Shh,” he growls. “It’s been ages, yeah? Teasing me the whole damn time, all short skirts and sitting on my lap--,”

He catches her hips as she bucks them a second time, using the leverage to slide her underwear down over them. They’re hooked in his teeth and Harry laughs.

“Fuck you,” she says, “like you-- _oh_ \--,”

He’s bitten her thigh, sucked it into his mouth, licked over the spot. Her hand fists in his hair.

“Shut up,” Zayn says, and then he flattens his tongue over her clit, pressing hard, then pulling back and tracing circles, tiny flicks of his tongue so she’s pulling at his hair and digging in a little with her nails.

“C--,” she starts, and he pushes his mouth down and sucks. She gives a breathy little shout of surprise and Zayn groans. He’s gotten hard enough that the cloth of his sweatpants is beginning to become uncomfortable. It’s ridiculous, the way Harry’s stupid mouth gets to him, the way right now her hand in his hair and the other scratching at the comforter is making him want to fuck her more than he’s wanted anything in ages.

He slides his hands down to push her thighs apart a bit more, and she gives another tiny gasp; he slips a finger into her where she’s gotten just wet enough and she swears. He pulls his mouth back and trades it for his thumb, rubbing and grinning up at her where he knew she’d be looking down.

“Fucking--don’t stop, Zayn, Jesus--,” she nearly snaps at him, and Zayn crooks his finger. “I w--ah--,”

“I had this feeling,” he says, “that you’d be like this, yeah? Mouthy.” He bites at the thigh he’s left unmarked. “Bossier than I expected, though.”

“ _Please_ , will you just--,”

He slides in another finger and Harry moans, “ _Yes_ ,” so loudly that Zayn needs his mouth back on her immediately. He sucks on her clit and then licks down to his own fingers. Stars to alternate tongue and fingers and mouth, sucking and licking and getting her rocking up into him, gasping nonsense, sometimes instructions until she’s mindless, just breathing, and he doesn’t need to ask her to know she wants to come like this. Just keeps working her, taste of her incredible on his tongue, sweat and sweetness.

She gives a little jerk and a cry and then she’s tightening on his fingers, coming with her other hand coming up to grip the back of his neck with the first still in her hair, thighs still parted. She’s shameless and loose and spread out under him and Zayn loves it, needs to fuck her until she shouts, wants to have her boss him around where he’s got space to shut her up, fingers in her mouth.

“God, c’mere,” she says, and her voice is still breathy and a little wrecked. He sits up and looks down at her. Little curled wisps of hair are sticking to her pink face and her mouth is a pretty red O, breath puffing out of it softly. He falls back against the bed, away from her, and starts to slide out of his sweatpants.

“Hey--,” and it takes a minute, but she pushes herself up. “That’s not coming here.”

“Had to get these off, didn’t I?” Zayn picks up the sweatpants and gives them a little wave before tossing them over the bed and leaning so he’s propped against the pillows. Harry giggles. “What?”

“Not wearing underwear,” she says. “Cheeky. Very me.”

And there it is again, a little glimpse of her, Harry at any regular moment. Silly sweet and stupid, goofy and endearing. Zayn’s heart gives a little squeezing ache and he clamps down on it. Forces the feeling away and gestures at Harry to climb higher on the bed.

“Easier for activities,” he says seriously, and it’s rather enough unlike him that it has Harry laughing again. God, he loves her laugh. Wonders if she laughs in bed with Louis, wonders if they have jokes. Wonders if she says his name more when she comes, if this is strange for her, if she’s comparing.

He wishes he could shut his mind off.

Harry’s up the bed now, settling her hips over his, wetness of her sliding against him. He catches his breath and she bites her lip around a smirk. She slides a hand behind him, beneath his pillow, and for a moment he’s confused; then she’s pulling out a condom and his mouth is falling open in surprise.

“What--,”

“I put it there this morning while you were brushing your teeth,” she says, and Zayn takes her waist into his hands, inhaling sharply through his nose.

“Jesus Christ, Harry.”

“You’re terribly tempting in the morning,” Harry says, sighing. “Absolutely pretty, really.”

For a fraction of a second Zayn feels it, the friendly atmosphere, the way this could be a little game, just Harry wanting a taste of what it’s like to give in to that temptation. Fuck a friend, have a little fun. Harmless. It could be harmless.

She tears open the condom and the simple sound goes straight to his dick, making him sink his teeth into his lower lip. _Harmless_ , he thinks again, and she rolls the condom on.

“Gorgeous,” she whispers, and rises up to sink down onto him, one hand on him as a guide and the other on his chest. He exhales harshly and she tilts her head back, eye fluttering shut, hissing, “Yes.”        

She’s tight and hot and flushed and beautiful, all of her, and he tilts forward as soon as she’s sunk down far as she can. Wants to taste her skin, get a nipple in his mouth. He does--it’s soft and so lovely to bite down on, just a bit. She moans, encouraging, and he gives the tip a little lick.

“Zayn--,”

She’s rolling against him, a little rocking rhythm. “C’mon,” she says, voice gone a little higher, “Harder, c’mon.”

He rocks up into her, pushing with more force that he planned, too desperate now that he’s here, hungry for the whiteness at the edge of his vision, wanting to disappear into the salty-sweet-dampness of Harry’s skin and the breathy noises she’s making, like she’s already gone. He grabs her tight around her waist and without warning rolls them over, gets her underneath him and starts to fuck her in earnest, hips crashing into hers and her legs coming up to wrap around him--Jesus, she’s flexible, it’s like nothing for her--and when he kisses her neck she tilts her head back like she’s desperate for it.

“Zayn, Zayn, Zayn,” she’s chanting, again, and Zayn didn’t think Harry’s voice could sound any better than it does when she’s singing but this is a perfect rhythm, the perfect roughness, and his vision’s starting to go fuzzy with her under him and around him like this, skin on skin and the blur of sounds.

“I--,” he grits out, “Harry, I’m--,”

“Come,” she gasps, loud, louder than he thought she’d be, “Oh, God, come, Zayn, come on--,”

And then he is, and his vision’s like snow, like blank white paper and fuck, it’s the hardest he’s come in weeks, months even, maybe the hardest he’s come since--since Liam, shit, Jesus, it’s been so long since he’s felt--but he’s not really thinking, it’s all a blur of words and feeling in his head and then Harry’s clenching around him, crying out, coming again and making him grunt with how sensitive he is.

He collapses onto her, unable to do anything but lie there for a moment before she pushes gently at his shoulders. He rolls off and onto his back. Everything is still a little soft; he feels like his hearing’s only half there but he’s certain he can feel her taking care of the condom.

“Thank you,” he croaks out, and her laugh is almost as breathless as he feels.

“Mm,” she says, and then she’s back at his side, curling into him. “You’re welcome.”

Zayn has no more time to think about morals or betrayals or the futility of his own desires, any of the other crap that’s been weighing him down lately, before his eyes slip shut and he falls into a blissfully dreamless, exhausted sleep.


End file.
